Mayor Harvey Ward joined the Gainesville City Commission in 2017, and after running out of terms, he announced his run for mayor. The mayoral race featured a crowded field with another sitting city commissioner, a former mayor and the former head of Gainesville Regional Utilities.  

Ward faced Ed Bielarski, the former GRU general manager, in the runoff. Bielarski vowed to run for office the day he was fired, a decision headed by Ward.  

Gainesville voters sided with Ward with 58% of the votes in the November runoff. He took office as mayor on Jan. 5, following Mayor Lauren Poe, who was term limited.  

Mainstreet spoke with Ward as he approached his 100th day in office, and this Q&A follows up on that conversation and the issues ahead of the city as the mayor completes his first year on the job. 

Q: How would you sum up the year? 

WARD: With a lot of strong headwinds, we’ve been able to accomplish quite a bit. We’re really, really proud of the more than $7 million in funding that we’ve committed to affordable housing projects. If you asked a couple years ago if we would be able to get that kind of thing done, we would have absolutely said no. But, we were able to commit substantial funding for affordable housing.  

I’m actually sitting on Hawthorne Road right now looking at the UF Health Project, the urgent care center that’s part of our Eastside Health and Economic Development Initiative. And again, a year or two years ago, if someone had said, ‘Is that possible?’ We’d have said, ‘Yeah, we’ll figure out how to get that done.’ But it’s actually getting done. It’s coming out of the ground, and it’s going to be treating patients by the middle of 2024. We’ll be building a road beside that and an RTS transfer station as part of the same complex. 

So, really, really proud with where we’ve gone with that.  

We’ve made good progress on getting better conversations between decision makers and public safety institutions to work on reducing gun violence. We’re not where we need to be on it, but we’ve made great strides on that this past year.  

But it’s been a strange year. I don’t think anybody expected GRU to be effectively a separate organization than it was a year ago. But here we are—it is. That certainly has been a historic and historically strange process. But that’s the hand that we’re dealt, and I think we’ve played it admirably. 

We are really proud that we’ve got a far more stable leadership team at City Hall than we had a year ago. We have one interim charter officer right now as opposed to last year when most of charter officers were interim. I think we’ll get that wrapped up early in 2024 as well, and I really look forward to having a full team of permanent charter officers. Our charters and the folks who work for them are high-performing individuals, and I’m really proud of that group of folks. We’ve been working with a lot of the same people in those positions for a good long while now. I think the stability that we’re going to roll into 2024 is something to be envied.  

So, I feel like we did a lot of really good work, not as much as we could have if we didn’t have some of the surprises we did. But we were able to make good on a lot of the things that we planned. And we had some really great surprises like the holiday parade. That wasn’t something we had planned on going into the year, but we managed to make it work and in ways that I think everyone really enjoyed. 

How have the new commission and the new permanent charters stepped into their roles throughout the year? 

There’s certainly a learning curve, particularly with three brand new commissioners. But I feel like we’ve gotten into a good rhythm and are able to work with each other really well.  

We just named Commissioner Chestnut as our Mayor Pro Tem for the next year, so I’m looking forward to being able to work with her in that capacity. I feel like it’s a very strong team on the commission, and the different things that each commissioner brings to the dais are really important and useful to the community. 

We spoke earlier this year as you approached the 100th day about what the role had been like. How has it changed throughout the year? 

I did not expect the friction between us and the Legislature that we encountered, but we’re working on that as well. I feel like we have a better relationship with many of our legislative delegation than we started the year with. I’ve made it a real point to get to know some of those folks better and to build good relationships with them. And I’m hopeful that that will be helpful to us in the new year.  

I enjoy being mayor. I like the role and I like being able to interact with the community in a substantial way. I enjoy reaching out to groups that are maybe not part of my natural constituency, like the Chamber of Commerce. I have a great working relationship with Eric Godet and the chamber and with folks in the development community that, again, are not part of a natural constituency for me, but we build good relationships, and those are going to serve us well going forward. 

Do you have a favorite day and hardest day on the job? 

My favorite day on the job was not what I expected. But December 2 is probably my favorite day on the job. That was the day of the holiday parade and the lighting of the grounds at the Thomas Center that evening and the kids dance party at Bo Diddley Plaza. That was just a really great day that is different than how we’ve approached the holidays at the city of Gainesville for many decades.  

Seeing folks feel comfortable celebrating themselves, not only as city workers but as part of the community, is really gratifying. I think the community, both at city hall and throughout the city, really enjoyed that opportunity to come together and celebrate and be proud of what we have going on in this community. That stands out as a really great day.  

Some of the days that I had to go to Tallahassee, was called up there, those were not terrific days. But overall, I think we are in a good position going forward, and I look forward to the opportunities that face us. 

What’s the most important issue to tackle next year? 

We’re going to keep working hard to make sure we deliver on our promises at the site on Hawthorne Road, the Eastside Health and Economic Development Initiative. We’ve got that off the ground; we’re going to continue to deliver on that. We announced [on Dec. 21] that we’re going to be finished with repaving North Main Street a couple of months earlier than we anticipated. We’ve already started that.  

We’re going to begin a process of talking to the community about how they want NE Ninth Street to be redeveloped and renovated. Looking forward to that. We’re going to continue with the 8th and Waldo project. I’m very excited about that.  

I’m determined to make progress on pedestrian and cyclist safety this year. We have to make progress about gun violence this year. Those are things that just must happen.  

We’re going to have to continue to find more creative ways to help our homeless neighbors find a place to live and lower the number of folks who have to live on the streets in our community. It’s always a priority for me. We’ve had to rethink the way we do it because we just don’t have the budget to apply to it that we’ve had in previous years. But we’re going to find a way to work with partners to make progress on that. Those things have to happen.  

We have to make sure that the money that we have committed to affordable housing is spent correctly, and that we are able to make good on that at the end of the year. So, we’re going to keep moving with the things that we identified as priorities coming into this term of office and that we’re going to keep being able to deliver on those. 

What concrete steps do you think will come next year concerning housing or Vision Zero? 

For Vision Zero, we’re going to continue to move down the road of planning and developing all of University Avenue from Lofton High School all the way down to the old UF president’s house. We’ll get a few more steps down the road toward making that a safer street with federal grants that we’ve been able to receive this year.  

We allocated the money last year, and now we have to stay on top of our private partners and make sure that that they’re able to deliver on the funding that we’ve supplied them. I hope to see new places for people to live from that money be delivered in 2024. 

How do you think the relationship between the City Commission and the GRU Authority will develop in 2024? 

I think it’s a relatively easy relationship to build. Most of us know each other. I don’t anticipate that we have a lot of work that we have to do with each other. I’m happy to let the GRU Authority do what they do and really build out their own space for how they manage the utilities. I look forward to them being able to do that in a robust fashion this coming year. I also hope that they make good decisions, budget-wise, and recognize the full import of all the budget decisions that they’ll need to make. 

Do you see the relationship being similar to that of the airport authority and the City Commission? 

It’ll never be exactly the same as that because there are some substantial differences between what the utility does and what the airport does. But it certainly will level out.  

I mean, when it’s just a matter of day-to-day operations instead of big headline moving sorts of things, that will naturally develop into a predictable working relationship. They’ve still got a position to fill. That’s going to take some time.  

But primarily, that’s a function of time. It’s going to be them filling out their working relationship with each other and with staff at the utility and the City Commission. As mayor, I’m here to do whatever we can to make sure that our community continues to have a utility that we can be proud of and count on. 

Anything else? 

I’m going to keep pushing forward on making sure folks recognize Gainesville as Florida’s cultural capital. We’ve made a lot of strides in that over the past year. The recent announcement by our own Lauren Groff that she and her husband, Clay, will be opening a bookstore in South Main Station—a big bookstore, not just a small space. I think that they’ve got over 2,000 square feet down there. I think that will help anchor some really great cultural opportunities along South Main that just continues to build out Gainesville as Florida’s cultural capital.  

That kind of thing doesn’t happen every day. You don’t get big independent bookstores announcing things like that. That is going to change part of how we think of South Main. We’re going to continue to look for opportunities to open arts and culture to the entire community in a way that has been thought about in the past but not actually delivered on, so I’m excited about all of that.